The One Where Snape's Bits Smell Like Cheese
by scumblackentropy
Summary: Now what summary could possibly top that title? Well alright, I suppose we should at least try. Here goes: in which two unpleasant characters have bad sex. But who are we kidding? You were going to click on it anyway, regardless of the summary. Are you still reading this? Really, now. That's enough of that. Go on, click on it. We promise not to judge you.
1. Chapter 1

This was a collaborative effort between me and my good friend ccognett. We hope you like it!

* * *

There was confetti.

One confetti. Two confetti. Red confetti. Blue confetti.

Sodding _confetti_.

_Everywhere. _

As though a piñata bent on world domination had taken a massive, ecstatic, rainbow-colored crap all over Wizarding Britain and people thought it was miraculous and transcendent and just plain bee-YOU-tee-ful.

There were these people flopping their limbs around, most of them yelling triumphantly, some of them snogging random bewildered strangers, and all of them throwing confetti all because they'd won the war.

Which was pleasant enough, Hermione supposed.

Now, don't get her wrong. She was absolutely, pants-wettingly happy. Honest to God.

But was it really necessary to toss around all this confetti?

It was in the middle of this train of thought that she felt a warm hand slide around hers. She looked up to find Ron gazing at her in that way he sometimes did. She supposed it was all very romantic, holding Ron's hand right after winning a war. Her heart did that thing in her chest where she was sure it was trying to eat all of her other organs (_Poof!_ there went her stomach—_ba-zoom! _there went her kidneys), and it was a nice enough feeling.

And she supposed she could look over the fact that Ron's eyes in the sunlight were a rather weak, watery blue, or that he had a bright red pimple on the tip of his nose, or that there was an entire crowd watching them, or that his hand felt like a blob of slightly moist, powdery dough enveloping her own.

They were having a _moment_, which she didn't get too many of, so she would gladly take what was thrown her way.

And the confetti wasn't at all too bad, not when her hand was being held by a tall, warm, pleasant-looking boy.

It felt like one of those moments where she is supposed to sigh blissfully, so she did.

"Sorry, didn't catch that. What did you say?" Ron yelled over the din.

"I wasn't—I was sighing," she yelled back.

"What?"

"I said—"

"Speak up, I can't hear you over all the yelling!"

"I said I was just sighing!" she bellowed.

"Oh." He scratched the side of his nose.

"Yeah," she replied with a grimace.

He looked at her and blushed and she bit her lip and blushed.

Great job, Granger. Botch the whole thing up, why don't you. While you're at it, you might as well tell him that you have a weird thing growing between two toes on your left foot.

They had a _moment _going on, and now it was over.

But then he raised his hand to her hair and she felt her heart sputter again. Good on you, Ron! she wanted to cheer, because Ron could always be counted on to salvage Important Moments.

Well. Semi-Important Moments, anyway.

Actually, this was the only time he had salvaged a Moment of any kind, but she was sure that, given the opportunity, he would prove himself a right decent Moment Salvager. As of right now, he was doing an excellent job of it.

He took a step forward, looked down and smiled at his feet, then looked back up to meet her eyes. It was _bloody_ adorable (_Ka-pow! _there went her adrenal glands). The crowd around them started to fade into a faceless blur. She felt her face heating up.

"You've got a little something in your hair," Ron said in a low voice. She supposed it _could _have been interpreted as sexy.

"Do I?" she smiled (Gently, now! Don't grin like a homicidal maniac). She stepped closer.

"Yeah... I think it's—hang on, I've got it." Ron started to bend his head down to hers. She stood on her tiptoes.

Slowly their faces grew closer and she wondered about the most optimal way to angle her head in such a manner that Ron's pimple would steer clear of her skin. One of Ron's hands found its way to her hip. She laid hers on his chest, and—

"_Oww_!" she howled.

"I'm sorry! I'm so, so, sorry! I think my hand's stuck in your hair. It's just... Just give me a second—"

"Ow, ow, ow, stop _tugging_, Ronald!"

"No, I've almost got it!" Ron looked just seconds away from a full blown anxiety attack, which would have been cute, had her eyes not been watering from the pain of her hair being yanked out of her scalp.

"Just leave it, Ron!"

"No, alright, hold still." He braced his left hand on her forehead while pulling with his right. She was sure that he was going to rip her scalp off.

"_Merlin_," she heard him breathe. "How the fuck is this even possible?"

And then she was free. She staggered backwards as Ron's hand came untangled from her hair. She sniffed, pressing both palms protectively against her beleaguered head.

"Hermione..." Ron bit his lip in consternation.

"I don't... Just don't, please. Jesus."

"Right," he said dejectedly.

She stepped away from him and tried not to feel too guilty as she resumed smiling and waving for the cameras.

Confetti _everywhere_.

Black confetti. Blue confetti. Old confetti. New confetti.

This one has a little car.

This one has a little star.

This one went up my nose and now I'm dying Oh God—

Hermione started to panic, then she remembered that she had these things called hands and attached to these hands were these flexible apparatuses (apparati?) called fingers, and so she pressed a finger to one nostril and blew hard. There was a flutter of yellow as the evil little bugger shot out of her nose and into hard-earned freedom. She looked around and made sure that no one saw her spasming like a three-legged giraffe that tried to take a poo, slipped in it, and died. What is it about confetti that made her think of all these fecal metaphors?

There was a white flash suddenly searing into her eyes and when she opened them again, Harry was giving her a funny look. Ron was looking at her like he'd just killed her cat.

On the front page the next day was a big, black and white photo of Hermione Granger, Order of Merlin, Second Class; Gryffindor and war heroine; brightest-witch-of-her-age and swot extraordinaire; Hermione _J_. Granger blowing a nostril full of snot into the cheering crowd.

* * *

It was the confetti that finally got to her and made her decide to quit her life as she knew it.

Not the words like 'responsibility' or 'paycheck' or 'rent.' Not the phrases like 'you have to' or 'employability skills' or 'but you didn't actually graduate, did you?' or 'Hermione, I'm sorry you read too much and Lavender has softer hands so I am breaking up with you.'

Ron hadn't actually said that. What he really said was, 'Marry me!'

But all she heard was, 'Please let me drag you down into the hopeless, mundane depths of my fatuity while I cheat on you with Lumpy Whore Brown!" and so she said no. And then after that came the big fight where he accused her of spending too much time with her books and having the hands of an arthritic mountain troll. Then he begged her to forgive him and take her back, and she said no again. Then he'd called her an intolerant, unfeeling bitch. She let that one pass because Ron was Ron, and it was pointless to hope for something more. But then he made a snide comment about how her tits were saggier than they used to be, and that was when she hexed him.

In retrospect, it was the cleanest break she could have hoped for, and he rather reminded her of a ginger gorilla (imagine, for a second, a red-headed, freckled gorilla waving his diddly-ho-ho at you, which is what Ron does when he's 'in the mood'; it is absolutely terrifying) with his grunting and his massive, shapeless forearms, so the whole thing was rather agreeable to her.

She couldn't, in all honesty, say that Ron was the reason she quit, though. Oh, the break-up was very messy, and a lot of other people were hurt, but after a solid three days of moping about her flat wearing nothing but a shower cap and Ron's oldest pair of sweatpants (They were _comfy_, okay?), it ceased to bother her.

She couldn't even say she was particularly bothered by the fact that she couldn't get a job anywhere, or the apologetic qualifiers offered up by the slack-jawed and spot-ridden clerks at every establishment she put forth her resume.

As in: "We understand…but…however…we just can't hire you... we appreciate your sacrifice for our world... perhaps another time…"

She wasn't that upset about ending up at the Ministry either. 'End up' is such a sad term.

Although, she was almost—_almost_—irritated when they told her that her presence would be required at all those formal functions they held to commemorate the death of Evil Snake Man, but that wasn't what got to her.

It was the confetti.

Three months after the war ended, and she was still finding bits of confetti in her pockets.

The thing is, Hermione Granger isn't known for quitting. She was really bad at it, actually. It was one of those things that she just didn't know how to do well, no matter how many books she read on the subject. Quitting and Quidditch. It was just not within her rather impressive arsenal of skills.

It had got to the point where she was sure that she'd die of misery at her little cubicle in the Ministry. It was a temporary job, and the only reason she took it was to pay the bills. Three months in and it was driving her mental.

"I am completely sure that they're going to walk in on me dead," she'd told Ginny one day. "Just dead. With my head slumped on my desk and my tongue hanging out and everything, and it'll take _years _to get the stench out of the carpet. No one will notice for two weeks, and then someone will go: what happened to that sweet girl who used to get me roast beef sandwiches from the canteen? And then they'll walk into my cubicle and there won't be any sandwiches for anyone because I'll be dead."

Ginny had barely looked up from the telly. It was a recent introduction into Hermione's flat, and upon beholding its many wonders, Ginny had been staying the nights over and eating her meals on the floor with her eyes glued to the football match or the soap opera or whatever happened to be playing at the moment. It didn't take very much to hold her attention, really. Even life insurance ads would do.

"_Ginny!_" Hermione whined. "What am I to do?"

"Hmm? Why don't you just quit?" she responded, popping a crisp into her mouth.

"_What_? Quit my job? How do I even—I don't think you understand—How could I possibly just up and decide to quit just like that?"

"Why can't you?"

"I—Because—"

Why, indeed?

Was it really that simple? Could she really just quit, just like _that_?

It turned out, it really was.

So, she did the only reasonable thing and packed her bags, packed her awards, packed her cat, and left Harry a note on the door of her flat that told him to contact the authorities if he hadn't heard from her in ten days.

Or to contact himself, really, because Harry Potter was, at the moment, the most important person in the Wizarding World.

She'd found a potential employer at an apothecary supply greenhouse. It was in a back alley of a back alley of what looked like a crack house in the dampest, most decrepit cavity of Knockturn Alley. Hence the note.

Her boss had the complexion of soured milk, a disproportionately bulbous head, and eyes that peered skeptically out of flakey grey sockets. He was a man of tremendous dignity, but he reminded her very strongly of a baked potato.

He was also completely senile, of course, which was why he'd hired her in the first place when the Ministry had proof that she couldn't even last a full three months doing mundane tasks. And aside from hiring her, he had a habit of keeping his left hand down the front of his trousers half the time he spoke. Hermione was rather wary of mentioning it because he jumped every time she made sudden movements or sounds, and she was afraid that she would cause him to rip his pud off.

Also, he kept calling her 'Scrivener' for some reason. Everybody else knew her as Hermione J. Granger, War Hero and Prissiest Prig to ever Priss the Prig, but he kept getting her confused with some ex-employee by the name of 'Scrivener.' She didn't mind so much. 'Scrivener' had a solemn ring to it that 'Hermione' did not quite approach.

And she did not want the customers to know that the dirt-streaked girl in the splotchy apron was, in fact, Hermione J. Granger, War Hero and Prissiest Prig to ever Priss the Prig. She may have quit her job, but she would never quit her dignity.

"I am a God-fearing wizard, Scrivener," baked-potato boss-man had told Hermione gravely, his goiter-ridden jowl quivering with self-righteousness. Iodine imbalance was an ailment that ceased to afflict the Wizarding World in the fifteenth century, but she was sure that he would claim that it was God's Divine Will that he be forever condemned to grow a zucchini squash under his whey-colored chin. "I understand that we cannot always help the way the Lord makes us."

Scrivener, whoever that had been, was apparently a Slytherin with the world's blackest black thumb, and it was only out of good old-fashioned Christian charity that he let her keep her job.

Hermione had nodded seriously at this, trying her best to ignore the man's liver-spotted forearm as it slowly disappeared under his waistband.

"Therefore, though there is something in your serpentine constitution that blights my Eden, I will keep you on," he'd concluded.

There must indeed have been a God, because what happened next was a miracle: the "fuck you" on her lips became a "thank you."

The _point _is, it was a good job. A decent job. Maybe a fairly not-unpleasant job.

Okay, so it was the one thing that stood between her and the eventuality of having to eat Crookshanks because she was seized by the sudden impulse to 'start over' at the age of twenty-five. So there.

But the one bright ray of sunshine was that, despite her boss's senility and starchy lectures on 'The Good Book'; despite the dragon dung compost whose fumes required the donning of safety goggles; despite the fact that the whole place overall smelt of the color brown; despite the abundance of fusty old _customers,_there was no. Bleeding. Confetti.

Thank. You. Lord. Buddah. Krishna. Merlin. Whoever the hell is in charge of this crap town.

Don't bollocks this one up, Granger.

* * *

The young Healer had perfect teeth and did not reek of Denture-Moisturising Potion like most of the other customers. He put his hands in his pockets and teetered on his heels as Hermione rang up his purchases. His lime-colored robes were pristine and only slightly more flamboyant than Harry's eyes.

They were, indeed, as green as a fresh-pickled toad.

"Splendid day for the gillyweed, eh?" He smiled when he said it.

Hermione felt a simpering grin slide across her face and looked up at him coyly from beneath her lashes. "How funny you are! I just had that thought myself!"

_Jesus, _Granger.

It was _not_ a splendid day for the gillyweed. Gillyweed preferred shade, as any idiot would know. But the sunlight, if disastrous for the plant, did do wonders for his hair. It shone like some archetypical golden chalice, spilling over with the promise of a good old fashioned lay (A _lay_, Hermione! Remember what those are?). It didn't matter that he wasn't the fastest threstrel in the herd; he was...handsome.

And it wasn't a bad thing to be attracted to handsome men, was it?

It was worth it. It was worth behaving like her brains had been replaced with fatty breast tissue. It was worth behaving like _Lav-Lav._

The Healer laughed as he handed over his gold, and it was a beautiful baritone that shot straight to her womb.

"Of course," said the Healer with a twinkle in his eye, "I won't pretend to know half as much as Herbology as you must!"

She ignored the urge to agree with him and focused instead on the gentle tingling in her stomach. It threatened to turn into swooping.

Hermione reached for his gold—closer, closer now, and..._there_—his hand was warm and dry and utterly masculine as it brushed against hers.

Prince Charming's touch lingered a little longer than was strictly necessary. She might have smiled like a shark that her posturing worked, but there was her frontal cortex going _Ka-Pow!_again. And there was the swooping, too, as his fingers brushed ever so shiveringly gently against her wrist before departing. He smiled winningly.

Hermione giggled most uncharacteristically—which was fine, because her nametag said 'Scrivener' anyway—and offered the daffodil bulbs with the hopes of a repeat performance.

She was not to be disappointed. The young Healer's beautiful, idiotic hand touched hers again and he even said something witty—or something she imaged was witty, she was rather distracted by the sudden need to press her thighs together-before winking.

_Winking!_

Hermione's heart melted, sending bloody-red froth dripping down her chest cavity. She decided to be the brave one, for once.

"So, er... Are you single?"

The Healer bestowed her with a beatific smile. "No, love."

Ah.

"But we've been in a rough patch lately, hence the flowers."

There is hope in the world, after all! She felt her toes tingle.

"What about you? Pretty lady like yourself..." The Healer winked again.

"Oh, yes. Very single. My ex cheated on me with a crusty trollop. His opinion on cheating was that it wasn't really cheating if I didn't find out about it. It's all very 'if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it,' except with genitalia." She beamed. She sincerely hoped that it was a charming beam, and that she didn't look like she was trying to clench all the sphincters in her body all at once, which is what Ron told her she looked like when she was happy. She wasn't even insulted when he told her that. Mostly because she was impressed that Ron knew how to use the word 'sphincter' in a coherent sentence.

"Okay..." The Healer said a little warily. "Anyway, these are lovely, thanks. Pat will love these!" he exclaimed happily.

Pat? _Pat?!_

Please God-Jesus-Krishna-Merlin let it be his grandmother.

"I'm sure she will," Hermione replied sweetly. Old ladies love daffodil bulbs, after all. Why, it's practically a prerequisite to being counted as an old lady. If there were a Handbook To Being A Lovely Old Lady published somewhere in the world, she was sure that loving daffodil bulbs would be at the top of the list. Or at least in the first chapter.

"'She?" he repeated with an amused tone and another lovely baritone laugh. "And of course this is why he prefers 'Patrick!'" he said with the air of a man who'd just had a 'Eureka' moment. "Of course!"

Of course.

Of course her 'Gay-dar' was as dysfunctional as the rest of her life.

Some are thin, and some are fat.

The fat one has a yellow hat.

From there to here, From here to there.

Funny things are everywhere.

Prince Poofter patted her hand with tender care. "Have a wonderful day, darling!"

It was as good a time as any to take a break for a bit of a cry in the loo.

* * *

Hermione knew how to repot a Mandrake.

She'd known how to repot a Mandrake since she was in second year. It was not a difficult process.

So why her boss was standing there in nauseatingly bright earmuffs, waving his wizened old hands at her in what was quickly becoming a filthy-looking pantomime, she couldn't say.

"What?" she mouthed at him.

He shook his head, mouthed something that looked suspiciously like 'Whore of Babylon,' and repeated the gesture. It was like a bad comedy sketch.

Extremely frustrated, Hermione buried the Mandrake in compost with a flick of her wand, took off her own nauseatingly bright earmuffs and asked, "What was that, sir?"

"Lock up when you're done," the starchy old wizard said. "Please. I'm off home for the evening."

"Of course."

Which was fine. It wasn't like she had a date or anything like that. It wasn't like she _wanted_a date. Certainly she hadn't spent thirty futile minutes and a bottle of Sleakeazy's attempting to make herself look the Whore of Babylon. She was sure—with complete metaphysical certitude—that she hadn't tried to catch the eye of that dashing young Healer who sometimes came in to buy flowers.

She didn't even _want _a boyfriend. Honestly. Any relationship that is labeled with a term as puerile as 'boyfriend' surely wasn't worth the time. Besides, all she wanted was someone who thought she was the greatest, funniest, most clever person in the world and wanted to spend all his waking time in her presence. And perhaps a bit of a shag.

She looked down at herself, her fingernails packed with compost, her hair attacking anything that came within a good fifteen inches, her nose red and raw with the cold.

Bloody Prince Poofter.

Bloody job. Bloody boss. Bloody confetti. Bloody _customers._

Boss-man left her alone after that to stew in her own dark mutterings and take out her frustrations on the Mandrake children.

"If ever I saw a plant with neither the will to live nor the dignity to die," sneered a voice behind her.

Well, speak of the Devil.

Hermione turned away from her potted Mandrake to regard the unwanted patron. "Sir, we actually just closed up and—oh." She blinked, because there was something that didn't make sense, and blinking was the thing to do in these occasions. She blinked again, but it was still there.

_It _was Snape. Smirking at her like he owned the place.

Stupid Snape. With the grease-streaked hair and the glower and the air of infinite superiority and oh how she longed to lob a house-elf sized lump of industrial grade Bobotuber pus at his face and see if he could still smirk after that.

Severus Snape, of all people, looking absurdly incongruous without his dungeon backdrop, like Harry would without his glasses, or like Malfoy without his sneer, or Ron without that big fat tumor hanging off his arm that was commonly known as Lavender Brown. Severus Snape, standing there with his stupid black eyes and his stupid black hair and that nose too big to be allowed in polite company. Severus Snape, Death Eater and Potions Master and _traitor._Oh, he'd been exonerated, but, in her book, he'd hang like any Judas might.

Some are old and some are new.

Some are sad, and some are glad.

And some are very, very bad.

Why are they sad and glad and bad?

I don't know, why don't you go and ask your fucking dad, you yammering cow?

"Granger," he said, looking mildly appalled and raising an eyebrow. She wanted to rip it off and force-feed it to him. "I see you've…ah…done well for yourself."

It was the 'ah' that pissed her off. It was completely unnecessary. And the way he said things, always over-enunciating ever so slowly like people had nothing better to do than to watch his stupid mouth form words.

Oh, it would be _glorious_. The Bobotuber puss was just within an easy arm's reach.

Of course she wouldn't have hallucinated anything quite _that_sarcastic. Hermione tried her best to play the thing off. "Oh, you know," she said, waving a filthy hand airily in her best Luna Lovegood impersonation, "plenty of fresh air and sunshine."

Next thing you knew, she'd be rambling about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and wearing her used knickers on her head or whatever it was Luna got up to these days.

"Indeed," he replied, letting the word hang awkwardly in the air as he gave her sweaty, dirt-covered self a contemptuous appraisal. "And why exactly are you working here, Granger? I know it isn't for love of Herbology and it certainly isn't for skill."

She might have huffed indignantly at this slight on her Herbology skills and glared if the whole situation weren't completely absurd. "Christian charity," she snapped.

He raised his eyebrow even higher. "Excuse me?"

"You know, sarcasm is the refuge of bitter old codgers who can't think of anything to say."

"Is it really? Please do tell me more." He said this in complete monotone.

"Sarcasm is how losers bring winners down to their level."

"Ah. I see. And are you implying that you are a _winner_, Miss Granger?"

"Oh, stuff it, Snape. Aren't you a little too old to be terrorising completely defenceless twenty-five-year-old girls?"

"And aren't you a little too old to be placing dead animals on top of your head? I daresay your employer isn't too happy with this habit of yours. It's... _unsanitary_," he said, curling his lip around the last word with utmost scorn.

One didn't live to the age of twenty-five with hair like hers without getting used to total strangers making jokes or giving her unsolicited advice about it. She was not impressed.

"What? Oh, you mean my hair, don't you? Well, isn't that creative. _Real_ creative, _Mister _Snape. What could a dead man possibly want to purchase in Poppy Cock's Greenhouse?"

"Charming as you are, Miss Granger," he began in a way that let her know his exact opinion as to her charms, "I haven't the time nor the patience to engage in _witty _banter with a child who has been deluded all her life into thinking that she is always the wittier one, when her wit is, in fact, rather pitifully stunted."

He cleared his throat imperiously and moved his head and shoulders in a manner reminiscent of a crow moulting.

"I wish to... That is to say..." He stopped, his brow furrowing for a second of brief confusion.

"Yes?" She said encouragingly. It was odd for Snape to hesitate like this. Though she knew nothing about him, and though she would very much like for things to remain that way, one thing she _did _know was that Severus Snape did not hesitate. Period.

"I wish to speak with your employer," he said. Reluctantly, like he was divulging some grave, life-altering secret.

"What? Oh he's gone..." She trailed off, because that's when she noticed something that made her reel with the cognitive dissonance.

Confetti.

Bleeding _confetti._

There was confetti in his hair. And it was pink. There was bright pink confetti on Severus Snape.

She blinked again in the hopes that the fact would sink in.

It was the stupidest thing she'd ever seen in her entire life, him standing there intruding on her life and shitting his confetti shit all over her day with his sneer and his stupid flapping robes and his stupid _confetti_. Somewhere in the back of her head a voice was reminding her of those days when she used to read through the dictionary, that she ought to know at least five hundred and sixty-three more words than 'stupid,' but the whole thing was just... so _stupid_. So unbelievably bloody stupid it prompted her to have what was probably the stupidest accident she'd ever had in her entire life.

Literally taken aback, Hermione knocked into the rickety greenhouse table, felt her elbow collide with the potted mandrake, and couldn't manage to get her wand out in time.

It was stupid, really.

There was the sound of ceramic breaking on the ground, followed shortly by a blood-curdling scre—


	2. Chapter 2

**Hour: 0**

Here are some who like to run.

They run for fun in the hot, hot sun.

Oh me! Oh my! Oh me! Oh my!

What a lot of funny things go by.

One among many (very many) irritating things about Lavender Brown was her tendency to describe things as 'pus-y' during the war, which really just sounded like 'pussy'.

Hermione had worked with her in the Healer Response Teams for a good miserable while. Lavender would gallivant around the wards, not helping the tiniest bit and saying rubbish like: "_Ew_! I'm not touching that! That thing is pussy!" The little turd-puff seemed to think that attaching a -y to the end of any word constituted an adjective, and, furthermore, that it was _cute_.

That, and her nasal, high-pitched voice that could easily be mistaken for a cat lobbed inside a cement mixer and left to die, were two things that Hermione absolutely hated about Lavender Brown. All this aside from her sneaky, perfidious character and her tendency to steal sensible women's boyfriends, of course.

Things that are covered in filth may be filthy, but things that are covered in pus are never pussy.

A pussy is a cunt. A vagina. That weird-looking thing between a lady's legs. A female sex organ.

A wound is never _pussy,_ it is _purulent_. Pick up a bloody dictionary, why don't you?

She, Hermione, was not _pussy,_ she was _purulent_. She and Snape. Snape and she. Covered in an unknown, gelatinous substance whose odour burnt like acid deep into her nasal cavity. They—she and he, he and she—were purulent.

It turned out her boss had been right about one thing: there _was_a hell.

Hell was the multi-colored migraine tugging at her optic nerve. Hell was lying on the refuse-strewn floor with dust coating the inside of her mouth. Hell was the aforementioned insidious glop caking her hair to her scalp. Hell was Snape's crotch in her face.

Understand this: It was _in_ her _face_.

I don't think you understand.

Alright, here. Have you ever had one of those awful stress-induced dreams where you can't move, and you know you're awake but for some reason your body refuses to obey the commands of your mind? It's an incredibly harrowing experience, sleep paralysis, as it's usually accompanied by the distinct sensation of an evil being looming just outside the edge of sight and the conviction that you will never again wake to see the light of day and never again have the chance to read a story as bloody fucking fantastic as this.

Well, Hermione's situation was much, _much_ worse than that, because it _wasn't _a dream.

_It _was in her face.

In. Her. Face.

How she knew it was his crotch, given that her eyes were screwed firmly shut, she'd rather not question too much.

And was it just her, or did it smell like... cheese?

Oh God please God let it just be her imagination.

She did _not_want someone's cheese-crotch all over her facial area, thank you very much.

What, exactly, had she done to deserve this? Was it the premarital sex with Ronald the Contemptible Clod? Was she paying for Scrivener's black thumb? Was it for secretly hitting Lavender with a nipple hair growing hex (it was particularly sinister: the removal of one hair caused the rapid growth of two more in undisclosed but distasteful regions)? Was it—

_Focus, _Granger.

She contemplated all the possible ways she could get it off without actually touching his skin. There were exactly three ways.

One: She could try to concentrate her magic into dissolving her body into the dirt, and therefore never remember this terrible incident.

Two: She could scream herself hoarse until he woke up and moved away himself, in which case he would probably blame her for the whole situation and get her fired.

Three: She could murder him. Right here. Right now.

Quite unfortunately, she hadn't the time to set up repeatable experiments for each plausible solution. She gritted her teeth, told herself that she was wearing her Big Girl Knickers, and tried to remember that she'd been through worse scrapes than this. She gingerly placed her hands on Snape, trying to ignore the heat radiating off his skin and melting into her palms, and pushed.

She tried not to analyse it too much, or think about which parts her hands were touching. It took her several false starts before she got Snape's body to do a sort of rocking motion on top of hers, using the momentum of his weight to get him off of her.

She got up and wiped most of the viscous yellowish clot off of her face only to find him lying on his back on the dirt-caked floor and grinning wolfishly, displaying the edges of his crooked teeth all the way back into his jaw.

"Snape...?" she said cautiously, her instincts tingling with the sheer _wrongness _of the whole situation. He didn't answer, opting instead to pick up a strand of greasy hair and hold it to the light, frowning as if it were the most fascinating object he'd ever had the opportunity to contemplate. He put it in his mouth experimentally.

"Snape. _Snape!_"

He turned his head slowly, very slowly, to face her, a calm, placid smile stretched across his mouth. His hair stuck wetly to his cheek.

"How do you feel?"

He opened and closed his lips as if trying to figure out how to work them.

"I feel like..." he said after several false starts, "I feel like... Like... I should say I feel like a slice of butter melting on top of a big old pile of pancakes."

The fact that Snape knew what pancakes were almost sent her over the edge. She would prefer to think of him as dining on slime and offal for breakfast instead of something as normal as _pancakes_._She _ate pancakes, for fuck's sake, and now she and Snape had something in common. It was, to say the least, a baffling thought.

She _did_, however, briefly contemplate collecting some recording equipment to document this fascinating occurrence, despite her state of befuddlement. Mostly for blackmailing purposes, understand. She felt guilty almost immediately after the thought because she is the type of person who feels guilty for stepping on an ant. Besides, Muggle equipment wouldn't work here.

"Look, Snape. You're not well," she said, opening her mouth as wide as she could in an effort to get him to understand her words.. She regretted it as soon as she caught him watching her lips move with a frightening intensity brewing in his black eyes. She backed away a little. "I'm going to see if we have any medication in the back, alright? If I don't return in five minutes just... Just wait longer. Okay? And don't _do _anything."

He looked at her very seriously. "I should like to sleep with you for a pork pie."

"Erm... Yeah, thanks, I suppose. Remember what I said! Don't move!" she called behind her as she picked her way around the fallen debris.

Her boss's goiter-ridden jaw came to mind as Hermione rustled through the back office for something resembling a first aid kit. She sincerely hoped that his refusal to participate in modern medicine did not extend so far as forswearing simple household potions and salves. Though she did not know, quite exactly, what she was looking for, or even what Snape was afflicted with. Or even if Snape was afflicted with anything at all. Perhaps this was what he was like in private. Maybe, underneath that dour carapace and all that excessive billowing, he was really nothing more than a harmless, misunderstood, crazy person. Maybe all he wanted out of life was to be able to eat his hair without being judged by society, and the hopelessness of this dream drove him to a sort of pathological dependence on making other people's lives miserable. It was impossible to tell, really. Who knew what a man like Severus Snape got up to all on his lonesome?

Regardless, her plan was to gather as many bottles of medical-looking liquid as possible and shove those down Snape's throat. He was a Potions Master. _Surely _he'd developed some sort of immunity by now and wouldn't die of potion poisoning. Or if he did, everyone already thought he was dead anyway, so... No harm done. She decided to deal with it when the time came.

Yes. Excellent plan, Granger.

The discovery of a grimy vial of what looked like Essence of Dittany brought with it hope. Hope which was quickly squashed by the appearance of a moldy bit of what looked like a half-masticated turnip that the Boss, apparently, couldn't even be bothered to cast a Preserving Charm on.

What sort of reprobate kept his turnip bits with his first-aid potions?

A goiter-ridden, Bible-quoting, groin-fondling reprobate, that's what.

She grunted in disgust and decided to check the bookshelves. There was bound to be an answer in a book somewhere.

Unfortunately, goiter-potato-boss-man's bookshelves were woefully understocked. All the books he had that weren't different versions of the Bible were _Darius Dalrymple's Guide to Jump-Starting Your Garden for Devout Followers of Our Lord, Jesus Christ_, a dog-eared copy of _101 Toenail Fungi and How to Grow Them_, and _Mandrakes: A Field Guide_.

She grunted again. Partly because she was disgusted, and partly because she was starting to feel a bit funny. The colors were starting to bleed out in front of her eyes, and there was this strange itch on the back of one of her eyeballs. Everything was bright and glaring like neon signs and she had to roll her fingers into fists to keep them from twitching on their own. The funniest part was that it wasn't such an unpleasant feeling at all.

From somewhere in the shop she heard a long, low moaning sound, much like the mooing of a cow.

"Snape?" she called.

No answer.

Desperate, she yanked _Mandrakes: A Field Guide _from the shelf and flipped it open. She didn't know if Mandrake cries could cause symptoms like the ones Snape was displaying, but it was worth a shot.

She flipped through the pages and found abso-bloody-lutely nothing. Unless she was planning on forming a self-sustaining Mandrake Community, the book was completely—she swallowed hard—useless. Yes. A book. Useless.

Perish the thought!

Alas, it was the uncomfortable truth. It was like the world had been lying to her all along.

She let the book drop from her hands back onto the table with an audible, dusty _thunk_.

And then, suddenly, almost like _magic_, it fell open to a page she had skipped.

'Delirium,' it said in big, blocky, barely legible lettering.

Delirium. Well. _She _certainly wasn't suffering from delirium. She hadn't eaten anything in the past four hours, so that was probably it. Yes, yes, perfectly plausible explanation. She tried to remember if her tongue always felt too dry and too big for her mouth whenever she got hungry. Or if the floorboards always crawled like that. Or when, exactly, she had taken off her shoes and stuffed them both down the front of her shirt, because there they were, one sticking out from each cup of her bra. Hunger could do that... Right?

She shook her head. She was in a bleeding _crisis_—what with Snape suddenly showing up pale and nasty and alive as ever and subsequently going mental—and there wasn't any time to think about hunger.

But _Snape_ could be suffering from delirium. Stupid Snape with his stupid greasy hair and his bleeding _confetti _and his stupid sexy forearms with the muscles that twitched and jumped like pure muscular se—

His sexy forearms?

She snapped the book shut with an irritated huff and frowned.

Absurd. Completely absurd.

She needed a... Well, she needed _something_. And so did Snape. Something to stop this insanity.

And that something was most assuredly _not _anyone's sexy forearms. Sexy forearms indeed. Absurd.

There was an aggrieved noise from the other room.

"Hold your bleeding thestrals," she grumbled irritably. Which, like Snape having sexy forearms, was probably another un-Hermione-ish thing to say, but who cared at this point?

Hmm.

She pushed her tongue into her cheek.

She'd just had a thought.

'Hermione' was a very odd name. It sounded old and fusty and pretentious, sort of like the sound a fart in a bathtub would make. What were her parents thinking? She would much rather have a different one. A more imposing one.

Like 'Severus.'

"_Sev-er-us_," she said slowly, liking the feel of it rolling off her tongue. It tasted like the deepest, darkest, sexiest chocolate.

What in the bloody _fuck_?

_Names_ did not taste like chocolate, and even if they did, _Snape's_first name (she refused to think it) most certainly wouldn't taste like it. If anything, it would taste like... Like cockroaches. Yes, that's it. Cockroaches. Or like a rancid meat pie. Or possibly like the bottom of Ron's sweaty foot.

"Fuck my life," she groaned, indulging in a spot of dramatic fist-shaking.

"Certainly," came Snape's voice from the greenhouse. "I'll fuck your life, if you insist. Although... 'Life' is a funny thing to call your lady bits."

Who am I? My name is Ned.

I do not like my little bed.

This is no good. This is not right.

None of this is fucking right and Oh my God the floor is tilting and what the fuck is dumb old Snape saying?

* * *

**Hour: 1**

She was high. As a kite. Tweaked off her figurative balls. Baked like a fucking cake.

Although she'd never experienced it before, and so she didn't really have any point of comparison. She understood why people used the term 'high,' though. It felt... _nice_. Like everything was alright with the world because she could just spend the rest of the day floating around like she was doing now. It was a little scary because the plants kept whispering dirty things into her ear, but overall it wasn't too bad.

The good news was that Snape wasn't doing any better. That had to be some consolation. Also, she'd discovered the source of the cheese smell; it _was_ cheese, surprisingly enough. A good old-fashioned block of hard cheese hidden at the bottom of a pot filled with dirt. It had been dislodged during the previously occurring brouhaha. She decided that she'd make her life a bit easier and _not _question its presence in the pot. After all, she worked for a todger-tugging maniac.

The bad news was that she was tweaked off her balls.

She'd given up on the search for a cure and decided to accept her fate. It was all very stoic and fatalistic and noble and _mature_. At least, that's what she told herself. What actually happened was that she collapsed in the back office, the Mandrake book falling off the table and landing corner-first on her back. Her face had made intimate contact with the ammonia-and-cauliflower-scented floor. Then she'd crawled back to where Snape was located, still lying on his back, arms and legs outspread.

"I feel that it is my duty to inform you, for reasons of legalities, that this _incident _is entirely your fault," she said, jabbing her pointer finger, which was quite lethal in its pointy-ness, in his direction. "But I am certain that we can handle this situation like the mature adults that we are. Isn't that right, Mister Cheese Pants?"

Snape propped himself up on an elbow and levelled a stare that would have demolished all her sense of self worth, had it not been directed some two feet to the left of her face.

"Some people play hard to get. You, my dear _Mizz _Granger, play hard to want."

She scoffed. And snorted. And scoffed some more. Then Snape scoffed too. What followed was an abundance of indignant scoffing from both parties.

Determined to have the last word, Hermione belched.

Then she said: "I suppose this is where we engage in the wittiest of banters. Please. This isn't a romantic comedy, my bunions are killing me, and I am almost a hundred percent certain that I am under the influence of some sort of pernicious magical substance and that I will lose my job as a result."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "And _you_, my dear Mister Cheese Pants, are no Hugh Grant."

This got his attention. He hauled himself up into a slumped sitting position and slurred, "I will not stand here—"

"But you're not standing at all," she pointed out in her Swot Voice. "You're sitting. In the dirt. Like a git."

"—I WILL NOT STAND HERE," he yelled over her, "and be insulted by some barely educated shop-girl with a face that looks like something dredged from the bottom of a cauldron! I demand to speak to your employer. What the devil is a 'Huegrand'?"

Her chin wibbled for a bit. The face comment was uncalled for. She thought for a moment and decided that it would please her to withhold the information that he sought. After all, it was _his_ fault they were in this whole mess in the first place. _And_ he was a right nasty motherfucker. She raised her eyebrows in a way that she knew made Ron go to his happy place. "But _why_? Tell me why and I'll tell you where he lives."

"That is most unprofessional of you, though why anyone expects any better from The Great Brown-nosing Granger, I will never know."

"D'you reckon..." she began inquiringly, scrunching her nose, "Do you think it would be too much to ask you to run into traffic and die?"

He glared at her. And scoffed. "Indeed."

* * *

**Hour: 3**

They each decided that it would be best to just wait the effects of Mandrake Delirium out. They didn't discuss it or anything, but they both stayed there on the floor of Poppy Cock's Greenhouse. It was a power play thing.

Eventually it got so bad that they'd started divulging their life stories to each other.

"Tell me about yourself," Hermione said.

"No," Snape said, curling himself into a corner. His hair at this point had turned grey from all the dust and cobwebs clinging to it.

Five minutes later, Hermione said: "Tell me about yourself."

And he said, "Fuck off."

Ten minutes later: "Please?"

"Your voice is about as soothing as a bag of dying babies. Stop talking."

Seventeen minutes later: "You know I'm not going to give up, Snape."

Silence.

Twenty-two minutes later: "_Please_, Snape! I can't take it! I swear I'm going mad! That plant over there is trying to seduce me—look at it, _look _at it!—and I can feel something crawling up my leg, and—"

"My father," Snape began gravely, "My father was a self-aggrandising mill rat from Manchester with low grade syphilis and a penchant for buggery."

He looked at her like he just _knew _she was going to interrupt him. She, not believing her luck in actually getting Severus Snape to speak, remained silent. He seemed to find something not to his satisfaction in the way his robes were splayed out beneath him. He spent some time rearranging the fabric into various shapes, cursed, and began speaking again. Hermione stared at the outline of his forearms beneath his sleeves.

"My mother was a seventeen year old Pureblood named Eileen with no talent at all for magic. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the handlebar moustache. Sometimes he would accuse me of being the anti-Christ and cursing his socks to melt into his skin when he wore them, which was only partially true. He had the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers wandering barefoot around Spinner's End; joint-smoking lessons. In the spring we planted flowers. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and kicked to within an inch of my life. Rather standard really. At the age of twelve, I received my first wand. At the age of fourteen, I lost my virginity to a Welsh Muggle prostitute named June who was also a Buddhist and believed that all things in the world are connected. She was completely hairless and I found her trying to shave my bollocks with a paring knife when I fell asleep."

"Well aren't you a special snowflake," Hermione replied, smiling faintly.

"Indeed." He looked at her expectantly.

"What?"

"It's your turn to talk, Granger. You might as well tell me all your deepest, dirtiest secrets right now. It won't matter, as I will make sure that you don't survive this incident."

"You gonna kill me, then?"

"What choice do I have? I've just told you the story of my childhood. It's only fair. It's a shame, really," he said sadly, staring at her tits.

"I really don't think I should be finding your behaviour flattering, but my brain doesn't seem to be working properly."

"Hmm," he responded, still staring.

It was actually quite nice to be ogled in this way,if she suspended her intellect for a little bit. She could be the not-uptight girl, _really_. She just had to try harder than most people. She hadn't been stared at quite so lasciviously since she upended two bottles of Sleakeazy's on top of her head in fourth year, and so she decided to swallow her feminism and play nice. She might have—_might _have, hear—stuck out her chest a little bit and 'adjusted' her top to make sure everything was hanging as it should.

"Well, okay. So you know how I'm a real clever person? And how I'm good at everything? There's a reason for that. There was this one time when I was seven and I shat my trousers in school. Everyone found out, and quite soon I lost all my friends. Even Shelly Stewart abandoned me," she said, frowning. "She was a spiteful bitch anyway, and she did some stuff with Patrick O'Shaughnessy behind the store room."

"It's the Shellys and the Patricks of this world that are the root of all evil and misfortune," Snape said sagely. She nodded, pleased that they thought the same way.

"Anyway, it was terrible. I was wearing gym shorts and they functioned as a sort of... poo colander. And all the hard bits were filtered out, while the rest dripped to the floor. This is the real reason I'm a bookworm; because once upon a time I crapped myself and I was forced into a life of solitary scholarly pursuits. Harry and Ron never had the faintest."

She looked up to find Snape's face set in a most... rakish grin. One that had no business being on his face after her humiliating poo story. Like he was contemplating a particularly delectable piece of Boomslang skin, or whatever it was that got his pulse racing. She wondered why this didn't bother her before edging closer.

She licked her lips. "You never told me," she began.

"Yes?" he drawled silkily, the sound slipping over her skin like something abjectly immoral, before edging closer to her.

"You never told me," she began again. His own lips looked thin and pliant and _pink_and very distracting.

Say! Look at his fingers!

One, two, three...

How many fingers do I see?

"Yes?" he repeated. She was practically in his lap now.

Oh Snape, dear Snape, won't you please finger me?

"Why you aren't dead," she finished with all the subtlety of the axe that had ravaged Sir Nick's neck.

Snape shook his head gravely. "I could not. I _would _not."

"Not even on a boat? What about with a goat?" she asked absently. His eyes were, she decided, also like the loveliest, sexiest dark chocolate.

"And who exactly do you take me for? Aberforth Dumbledore?" He leaned in even further.

Quite by accident—really, because accidents _did _happen all the time; in fact, entire stories could be written based on a single accident—she found one of her hands wrapping around his forearm. She squeezed experimentally, and the muscles tensed something fantastic under her skin. It almost stopped her from pointing out that Snape was completely wrong. Completely.

"That's a myth; Aberforth Dumbledore does not partake in illicit doings with goats," she pointed out diplomatically.

Snape raised an eyebrow. It reminded her of a dark chocolate caterpillar, and she wanted to nibble on it. "Oh? You think so, Miss Granger? May I remind you that you are _not_the expert on all matters. I'll have you know that Albus warned me about Aberforth's hircine... proclivities."

"Ahh," she replied with the air of one who had just received a great pearl of wisdom, "Of course! Did you inherit your father's penchant for bugg—wuh." She had to stop speaking, could not possibly continue speaking, because Snape had put her hair in his mouth.

_What_?

The one time she convinced herself to pull the stick out of her arse, and the bloke puts her hair in his mouth. She couldn't decide on whether his behaviour was a compliment to her or not. Probably not.

It took her what seemed like forever and a half to process this information. What was the protocol for this sort of situation? What was one to do when a formerly dead ex-professor came into one's place of work, proceeded to get high, and ate one's hair?

She could almost hear the stringent _beep! beep! beep! _in the back of her head as everything she thought she once knew collapse into a wet, steaming pile of something resembling the stuff that collects in your belly button if you are a nasty wanker and don't wash your crannies.

"Wha—I don't understand..." was all she could manage, breathing hard with the force of her disbelief.

"Please, Miss Granger," he tutted impatiently. "_Do _be quiet."

She collected her wits about her. This was not the strangest thing she'd encountered in her life. She'd helped to defeat a nose-less madman. She'd managed to lead two teenage boys around the forest in one extended camping trip despite having no experience whatsoever in the camping arena (She lied about camping with her parents; she would rather pop Eloise Midgen's pimples with her teeth than spend any extended amount of time outdoors). She'd got the biggest wedgie of the universe escaping from a bank on the back of a dragon.

She was Hermione Granger, _dammit! _And she could handle this.

Whatever _this _was.

"Oi. Snape."

"Yes, love," is what seemed like he was trying to say, but what actually came out of his mouth as he chewed on her hair was: "Hrrrmmm... hmm-hummm..."

It was like some kind of absurd and never-ending Freudian nightmare.

She shook off the torpor keeping her limbs locked in position, shook off the uncharacteristic sluggishness in her head, pulled herself together, and did the first thing that occurred to her, which was to elbow Snape hard—very hard—in the face.

She yelped as her elbow made contact with his great big clonker of a nose. It was like elbowing a brick wall. He emitted a sound reminiscent of a drowning rat and leapt back from her, cupping both hands around his face. She yelped again as her hair was tugged with the alacrity of his retreat.

"Jesus _fuck_, Granger," he growled. The sound was muffled through his hands as he gave her a glare that ought to have melted the skin off her bones.

"Oh my goodness, I'm _so_ sorry," she said sincerely. His eyes were beginning to water. "Here—let me see—okay, okay, I won't touch you," she said placatingly, trying not to move too quickly lest she should startle him. He practically _spasmed _as she stretched her arms out toward him, and she drew them back to herself hastily. She bit her lip.

"You're a bloody bitch, you are," Snape said with vindictive satisfaction.

"Well, I'm sorry, but you were eating my hair, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. It was very frightening for me, you must understand. Does it hurt terribly?"

"_Yes_," he hissed.

"Well, _good_. That's what you get for eating my hair, you silly boy."

Suddenly, he lunged forward, bracing himself on his hands placed on either side of her on the floor so she was trapped within the cage of his body. He brought his face close. Their noses almost touched, and she was briefly occupied with discovering if his skin was just as fine up close as it seemed from afar. It was.

Strange.

"I believe it is my duty to inform _you_ that you ought to get used to being frightened," he said lowly, sounding much like his old Potions Professor self. It made her _tingle_ rather inappropriately. "It is my understanding that you've never had a _man_ between your thighs, and the first time I _fuck_ you, I might give you a bit of alarm. You see, love, I am a _man_, and I know how to do these things well."

It was _obscene _how absolutely arousing he sounded, with blood dripping down his nose and all. As suddenly as he moved forward, he retreated to his spot by the wall and put his hands back on his face. She clutched a hand to her thudding heart.

In a moment, his demeanor changed entirely. Gone was the devastatingly sexual Potions Master, and in his place was the petulant, inebriated man who had put her hair in his mouth. The portion of his cheeks she could see through the gaps between his fingers turned a faint pink. "I only wanted to see what it would taste like," he said mulishly and a bit haughtily like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and she was an utter buffoon for not knowing that. "There was no need for violence."

This brought her back to the present, and how she was currently _high _with Severus Snape.

"I already said I was sorry, what more do you want? If it makes you feel better, I feel really odd. I mean, really, _really _odd. Like my heart's about to drop out of my vagina. Also, I am single and lonely, hungry as a bleeding hippo, and I find myself confronted by the existential dilemma of finding your forearms the most erotic pair of male appendages I have ever encountered in my life. So, in the pain department, we're pretty even," she shrugged, palms out.

"I am fairly certain you broke my nose, Miss Granger," he said stonily. "If you truly want to make amends and to be, as you put it, _even_, kindly place your face within the immediate vicinity of my fist."

She wasn't able to tell if he was joking. She laughed nervously.

"Oh, you're funny, Snape. Ha. Ha-ha..."

He peeled his hands off his face to inspect his nose. It made for quite the sight: Severus Snape sitting with legs splayed on the dirt floor, with a thin stream of blood dripping from a nostril, and with his eyes crossed to see the damage she'd done.

"See?" she began. "It's not broken at all. Is it? I can't actually tell. Has it always been that shape? Perhaps we should—" she clamped her mouth shut upon beholding the hostile curling of his lip. "Okay, okay, I'll stop talking now."

* * *

**Hour: 3.5**

"I seem to recall you saying something rather salacious and unbecoming of my... forearms."

"What?"

"You said my forearms were, and I quote, _erotic _appendages."

"No, I did _not_."

"I remember perfectly, Miss Granger, almost as if it happened not half an hour ago. Would you like me to remind you? You said—"

"Okay, alright? You have sexy forearms, and I have no idea why I think so. They're so sexy I want to lick them."

"... I... I'm sorry?"

"What?"

"You said—"

"I don't think I said anything. In fact, this is the first time I've spoken in an hour. I didn't say anything."

"Alright, then..."

"Good."

"You may continue staring at your corner."

"Jolly good."

* * *

**Hour: Something**

After some time they were chatting as if they were the best of buddies. Somewhere in the back of her head a voice told her that this ought to put her on her guard. She told it to shut the fuck up.

"You know," Snape said, waving his hand with an air of vague but infinite wisdom, "only people of a certain sad, pitiful disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at the age of twenty-five."

Hermione responded with a glowering look. "Is there something so wrong about wanting to please members of the opposite sex? Oh, of course, forgive me. I'd forgotten I was speaking to the resident bat of the dungeons." She attempted to mimic his own airy wave of the hand, became distracted by the inexplicably compelling trail it seemed to leave in the air, and failed miserably.

She'd been doing a lot of that today, it seemed. Failing miserably.

"Besides, I never said that I'm frightened of being alone."

"Try harder, Miss Granger. Perhaps if you read a _book_on the art of self-deception, you might be able to memorize something to say that would make you appear to be less of a pity case."

"I think you ought to know that that was a lot of words you just said, and that I wasn't paying attention to a single one, and that I think you look like a... a... Like a jellied eunuch! So _there_," she announced haughtily. "You have no power here, Snape."

She looked up to find her ex-professor staring at her oddly. She tried to discreetly pass her tongue over her front teeth to check if there was anything stuck there.

"You are a woman of the strangest sort, Miss Granger," he said contemplatively.

"Says the man who tried to eat my hair."

"Quite." He nodded slowly. "Tell me, Miss Granger, are your standards very high when it comes to finding someone of the opposite sex attractive?"

"Excuse me?"

"I am trying to ascertain why it is, exactly, that you are single, and how I can use this to my advantage."

She squirmed. "It's none of your business."

"What do you find attractive in a mate, Miss Granger? I assume you will say something along the lines of Gilderoy Lockhart, or perhaps Cedric Diggory."

"Cedric Diggory? His face looks like a shovel. I don't find him attractive at all. He was completely full of himself, and he was almost as smarmy a git as Malfoy, which is a terrible thing for me to say because he's dead, but there you have it. Cedric Diggory rustles my jimmies."

"Don't you mean he rustles your ovaries?" he leered.

Ew.

"My ovaries are also included in the 'none of your business' category. And what the hell does that even mean?"

"I have no idea, I'm sure. I am suffering the effects of what looks like Mandrake Delirium, and half the things I say are not making sense to me. Do forgive me."

"Well, what about you?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"What do _you _find attractive in a mate? Leathery wings? Scales? A lack of human empathy?"

"That sounds about right. I prefer my women as close to mute as physically possible without actually being mute." He gave her an appraising look. "Also, I do not like brown, bushy hair. Or pert noses. Or eyes the color of dirt. I like them docile, compliant, and, above all, as far from inquisitive as possible. For example, I should not like to be asked about my childhood, neither about my sexual preferences."

"You like my tits, though," she said helpfully.

He pondered for a moment. "Yes. Indeed I do."

"If not Cedric Diggory," he began skeptically. "Perhaps Potter? There had to be a reason you let him hang around you all day."

"Harry happens to be my _friend_. Ever heard of those, Snape? You know, those people who would actually _care _if you happen to disappear off the face of the Earth all of a sudden? People who say nice things to you when you feel like crap?"

"In my experience, a friend is someone who would gladly coerce an ambitious, impressionable young man into throwing his life away in exchange for _this_." He held his left forearm up and yanked the sleeve down to his elbow.

"Oh. That's... Sad."

He scowled at her in a way that reminded her of the warning looks he used to give in class. As though he was daring—just _daring_—her to test the limits of his tolerance with her useless pity. Pitying Severus Snape was akin to kicking a baby in the face: neither misguided action could possibly work in your favor.

She felt compelled to change the subject. And some insanity compelled her to say something...nice. She cleared her throat and raised her chin defiantly. "As a matter of fact, I don't find you entirely unattractive," she announced.

That, apparently, was not what he'd wanted to hear. "Do not mock me, Miss Granger. Contrary to popular opinion, I do, in fact, own a mirror."

She hoped it was a silent one.

Hermione responded with a very Hermione-ish huff. "Now who's playing hard to want? Honestly, Snape, it's called a compliment. You might try accepting one, or—God forbid—offering one some time."

"A 'compliment'?" he sneered the word like it smelt of vomit. "_That_, Miss Granger, was an insincere platitude, and I have no interest in—"

"Fine!" she interrupted, exasperated. Honestly, it wasn't her fault the man had all the self-esteem of a syphilitic Kneazle. "I'm sorry. If it's any consolation, I have heartburn all the way down to my ankles and I'm pretty sure I'm constipated. Also, I'm single."

Snape glared at her for a while longer before nodding minutely. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Weasley did not deserve you," he finally offered with the stiff reluctance of a petulant child. Or possibly just a stuffed-up old codger with absolutely no people skills. Still, it was... _nice _of him to make the effort. She guessed.

"Erm... Thanks. No, really, thank you. That means a lot, coming from you."

* * *

**Hour: No one gives a shit**

"I can _feel _you staring at my tits, Snape," Hermione offered matter-of-factly. She found she didn't mind very much, though, astonishing as that was. She was positively inundated with astonishing things at the moment. Snape not only had astonishingly sexy forearms and a voice like dark chocolate, but it turned out that his chest incredibly comfortable back-rest. This was surprising, given his bony slenderness. It must be the padding offered by those voluminous robes.

"Mmm," Snape responded noncommittally. The sound of it tickled her ear. And he was still staring down at her tits, she was sure.

"I thought I wasn't your type," she pointed out. She dug her fingers into his thighs, which were resting on either side of hers. They were satisfyingly firm. A few of his fingers brushed lightly over her collarbone and she felt his lips hot and seeking at the whorl of her ear. It was an interesting sensation, and she wasn't sure if she liked it.

"In fact, I'm absolutely certain I'm not your type." It was becoming somewhat difficult to think, as his teeth had just nibbled lightly at her earlobe. Then he stuck his tongue right up in there and _oooh_, she definitely liked it. She settled more comfortably against him and cocked her head, the better for him to lavish attention on her throat. She decided to show her appreciation by reaching behind her and scraping her fingernails down the back of his neck.

That wicked hand snuck down under the front of her blouse and she must have gone completely insane, because her heart stuttered and sputtered and almost stopped completely and she had to clench her thighs together to keep it from falling out through her birth-hole.

"Just as I'm certain this is a very, very bad idea." She was babbling now because his thumb and forefinger had just discovered a nipple and were now rolling it lightly between them.

"You're not. And it is," Snape whispered into her ear, his voice paradoxically rough and yet, liquid. Sinuous. It lingered indecently close to her skin and slid down straight to her groin.

It took her a short moment to realize that the thing pressing insistently into the small of her back was an erection. An erection! Severus. Snape. Had. An. Erection. And she, Hermione Granger, Hermione _J._Granger, had elicited it. She let the thought sit and percolate for a little bit and no, it did not get any less surreal.

This strange knowledge and the accompanying…pride? Yes, it was pride that made something pop between her ears. And bam! (_Ka-pow! Ba-zoom! Ka-booey-booh-bah!_) There went higher-order thought.

Breathe, Hermione. One, two, breathe. That's it.

She opened her mouth to say something, but only some incoherent little moan came out, because there was his other hand. Just above her knee. Daring to sneak under her skirt, tapping along the skin of her inner thigh, inching its way devilishly toward her knickers.

Good _God, _what knickers had she worn?

Shit! Was it the yucky, greying, only-to-be-used-for-periods pair? No—maybe those yellow granny ones with the fucking bow on the band—no hang on, it's... Thursday? Thursdays are blue cotton knicker days, so it could be those, which wouldn't be so bad if she hadn't grabbed them accidentally out of the preteen aisle. There was also the minute possibility that it was the tummy-tucking pair, which could potentially be embarras—

And then he cupped her, and she forgot to care.

Unable to prevent herself, she ground against his hand, bending her head up and back awkwardly to look at him. Snape looked incredibly self-satisfied, his dark chocolate eyebrow quirked again.

"Cat got your tongue, Miss Granger?" He was smiling. The bastard. She tried to work up a witty retort, but it seemed that a hand had gotten her cat. Her pussy-cat, to be precise. His hand, sneaking under her knickers. And she _let _it.

_I can see up your nostrils! _was what she wanted to say, but her throat got stuck forming the first sound and what came out instead was a pathetic stutter.

"I—I—"

Snape responded by pulling her into a searing kiss. His lips were thin and pliant and oh so very insistent and—_Jesus_—was that the tip of his index finger circling her clit?

Oh, yes. Yes, it _was._

Bump! Bump! Bump!

Did you ever ride a Wump?

We have a Wump with just one hump.

But we know a man called Mr. Gump.

Mr. gump has a seven hump Wump.

Oh how I'd like to go Bump! Bump!

Just jump on the hump of the Wump of Gump

I'd sure like to jump your hump, Mister Wumpy Gump.

She groaned into his mouth and bucked shamelessly into his touch because she was beginning to feel so, so, so turned on, because she never knew how sex on a dirty floor surrounded by the evidence of plant murder could be so bloody wonderful, because that _thing_ his fingers were doing was causing this unbearable pressure to build up _everywhere_and she was sure she was steaming out the ears and who the fuck cared that it was stupid Snape doing it anymore and—

"Ow! _Fuck_, Snape!" she hissed. "You can't just _ram _your fingers in there and go right for the Snitch!"

"It's hardly my fault you're dry as the Weasley gene pool. _Relax,_Granger."

"And it's hardly _my_ fault your fingers are as calloused as... as something very calloused. _Gently,_Snape."

"Do be quiet, Miss Granger," he chastised. "I'm attempting to find your Gräfenberg Spot."

Well. There's a sentence she'd never, in her wildest, most inappropriate, most vulgar dreams, expected to hear from him. She sucked her tongue off the back of her teeth, frustrated. "Well you're going about it all wrong, and in any case that's another myth. There's no scientific evidence to suppo-_ooooh my_!"

He curved both the fingers inside her and made this curt, decisive little 'come hither' motion that made her thrust her hips and keen something thoroughly wanton and abandoned. She felt like she might just explode with the lovely, lovely, lovely pressure and, perhaps, pee all over his hand, but she found she could hardly care because it turns out the Gräfenberg Spot might just exist after all and it was bloody _wonderful._

"Oh! Good Merlin, that's bloody amazing. Ron never used to—"

"_Focus_, girl. Focus on my fingers."

"Oh dear God your fingers..." she breathed, giving in to obedience, for once.

He darted his fingers out of her and slicked them up, then down, then slowly back inside her. He did this twice, pumped his fingers in her cunt, twice more, pumped, added a third finger. She heard him mutter against her shoulder, then felt his teeth clamp around the base of her neck, the suction of his tongue working against her flesh.

All the while she was gasping for breath and writhing between his knees, her legs splayed out over his, her fingers clamped around his elbows.

"_Ungh_, yes, yes, yes, yes, ye—wait, what are you doing?!"

But Snape was already standing after having dropped Hermione unceremoniously on the dirt. He seemed to be arranging his robes to hide a bulging wump lump at the front of his trousers. There was—Good _God_, no—the tinkle of the little bell that indicated that the side door was opening, then the voice of a wizened old wizard floating in across the greenhouse.

"Scrivener!" the Potato Boss called.

She looked up at Snape, the panic just beginning to overcome the thick haze of lust in her brain. He, in a gesture that seemed somewhat uncharacteristic, offered his hand to help her up. She stared at it.

"Get yourself together," he hissed at her. The effect was somewhat ruined by the expression on his face. It looked as though somebody had force-fed him Elixir to Induce Euphoria and he was trying his damndest to inform said elixir that happiness was beneath his dignity.

Struck with sudden inspiration, she grabbed his hand and buried his two fingers knuckle-deep in her mouth. She delved her tongue into the point where they met his palm and then sucked, hard. She thought she'd be put off by the taste of her own... stuff, but she wasn't. In fact, she was oddly aroused by it. She released his fingers with a small _pop_. Snape seemed catatonic. He was staring dazedly at her mouth, his arm still outstretched.

"Grang—"

"Scrivener! Where are you?" The old man called out from the next room. "What sort of iniquitous operations are you concealing from me now? Scriven—!" There was a pause. An alarmed exclamation. The scraping of hands against dirt. The audible crack of old bones. Then, "Angels crying out to heaven for vengeance!"

Hermione used Snape's still frozen arm for leverage and stood shakily. She made vague patting motions on her hair and upper body, straightened her skirt, and generally tried to put her appearance together as quickly as possible. It was a futile effort. Her knickers (blue cotton: un-sexy, but serviceable) lay in plain sight on the floor. Just as she decided that it might be a good idea to retrieve them, the Potato Man appeared. For once, both of his hands were out of his pants. They were cradled protectively around a dessicated Mandrake child.

Dead. As a doornail. Quite certainly dead.

The Mandrake, that is. Not her boss.

No, her boss was alive. Though he looked at her with the paradoxical accusation and abject horror of a devout follower who had just discovered The Baby Jesus's murderer.

"Good evening, sir," Snape said smoothly, coming into himself just in time. "You must be the proprietor of this establishment."

"Judas!" the old man cried, thrusting a finger at Snape.

Well, Hermione could have told him that.

"Ah, yes, the Mandragora. I will see that you are properly compensate—" Snape began.

"Anti-Christ!" the old man continued, now pointing his finger at Hermione. She resisted the insane urge to point at Snape and say that his father had already made that observation.

"Come, now. There's no need for melodrama. I merely wante—" Snape tried again as the old man surveyed the extent of the damage in the room.

"YOU DITHERING FUCKWITS!" he bellowed apoplectically, his watery eyes bugging out of his skull. "You knocked over my Puffapod Blooms! You—you—Have you any idea how much I paid for those? I ought to skin you hoodlums for your—"

"I think it's time we left, Mister Snape. Come along now," Hermione said, tugging on Snape's arm and shepherding him out the door.

"Out! Both of you! Out of my greenhouse!" They heard behind them.

Who am I? My name is Ish.

But you can call me Ishmael.

I had a fish; I had a wish

And I'm not sure I'm well.

And that is the story, more or less, of how Hermione J. Granger, War Heroine and Brightest Witch of Her Age, lost her job.

And then some other stuff happen, and then they died.

No, just kidding.

"Hey, Snape," she said slowly as they wandered down Knockturn Alley.

"I'm no expert, but don't Mandrakes only cause Delirium when they're fully matured? And it only triggers in people who have been exposed to the venom of an Albino Porlock within the past two months of the Mandrake encounter?"

"Word for word, as always, Miss Granger." Snape wrapped a protective arm about her shoulders as a decrepit, hunchbacked old witch sidled up to them with a tray of what looked like some poor bloke's ripped-off fingernails. One toxic sneer from Snape and the witch hissed and shuffled back to lurk in her dark corner.

"Since there are no Albino Porlocks in existence in Wizarding Britain, or indeed anywhere else in Europe, we can assume that we were experiencing the effects of Puffapod Poisoning."

"I believe so."

"But doesn't that only last for around ten minutes?" She discretely wound her arm around Snape's waist. She didn't think he noticed, but she felt his hand give her upper arm a gentle squeeze.

"Indeed."

"So... Why were we acting mental for the entirety of—" she checked her watch— "almost seven hours?"

Snape stopped walking and looked at her seriously. "In my forty-four years of life, I have found that it's best not to ask questions. About anything. Ever."

"Okay," she nodded.

He straightened and glanced around him at the rotting, rubbish-strewn piss-hole that was Knockturn Alley. "I think I should like a drink. A strong one. Several strong ones, in fact, in very rapid succession."

"Sounds like a plan."


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: This chapter reposted for corrections and such.

* * *

"I think I might add 'alcoholic' to the list of things I do not appreciate in women," Snape said admiringly as she downed her seventh shot of Goblin's Revenge, which was a vile excuse for gin that tasted something like mouthwash and perfume mixed with a 'delicate hint of juniper berry.'

"Nungh," she replied intelligently, planting her face on the table.

The Leaky Cauldron's bar table was cool and smooth against her forehead and there was relatively little confetti visible in the poorly-lit conditions. The general din of the place wasn't doing much for her headache, but the whole scene seemed appropriate for a recently unemployed twenty-something who'd just tried to boff her ex-professor in a Herbology-related delirium.

She raised her head just enough to scowl at the ex-professor in question. "Why aren't you dead?" she asked for the umpteenth time that day.

"You will resist your deranged urge to molest me with questions, Miss Granger," he commanded.

"Why did you want to talk to my boss?"

"_Former_ boss. And cease your prattling."

"Do _you_ think I read too much? Ron said I read too much."

"Do you really want me to answer that, Miss Granger?"

"Answering a question with a question, are we? How very witty of you, _Mister_ Snape." The broomstick-up-the-arse title of 'Miss' was really beginning to irritate her. Especially now that she was sober.

Somewhat sober.

Relatively sober, anyway.

Whatever. The point _is_, relative sobriety did _not_ do wonders for his personality.

Snape looked down at her with utmost patronization. "I do, as a matter of fact, think you read too much. It is entirely unattractive in a woman. Nearly as unattractive as the dragon dung compost packed under your fingernails. Tell me, do you intentionally wallow in the muck and mire of industrial greenhouse filth? Or does your hair have its own gravitational field and naturally suck everything into its nebulous depths?"

He picked up a hank of her befouled hair with two fingers, holding it aloft with the same expression that one might regard a used prophylactic found lying across the seat in a public lavatory. Something about the way he held his mouth told her he was laughing at her. She did not care for it, and batted his hand away.

"Good God, Snape. Who knew you were a misogynist in addition to everything else." She sat up straight, picked up her drink, and sloshed it in his general direction. "You know what? You're an emotional fucking cripple. Your soul is dog shit. Every single thing about you is ugly." She took a deep drink before repeating, "Ugly."

He raised his stupid bleeding eyebrow yet again. It looked like... Like a mass of dead cockroaches writhing in shit. Yes, that's it exactly. Cockroaches. With the squirmy legs and the antennae and the—the—

Not sexy. Not one whit. She mentally congratulated herself on her creativity.

"And you're a cunt. You've always been a cunt. And the only thing that's going to change is that you'll become an even bigger cunt," he said flatly.

"Go fuck yourself."

"I assure you, Miss Granger, I plan to. The fact that I shall never have to subject myself to one of your long-winded essays ever again is, and has been, cause enough for celebratory self-abuse. I could not and would not, on a boat, read another one of those atrocious papers you wrote."

"You can't even get Seuss right. Wanker," she shot back, shaking her head. "Sad little wanker."

"Haven't you been paying attention? I said as much already. Do keep u—"

"You were looking for a job, weren't you?" she accused suddenly, shooting up her seat and pointing a finger at him. It soon became evident that she did not think this course of action through. The world spun in front of her eyes and some blaggard turned off the gravity. She fell back into her seat with a thunk and placed her head back on the table where it would hopefully stop trying to free itself of its attachment to the rest of her body.

He began to speak, but she continued right over him. "You _were!_ Well, look at this. Severus Snape, Order of Merlin, _Second_ Class, sitting in a sodding bar and unemployed. How the mighty have fallen." The effect of her pronouncement was somewhat dampened by the fact that her mouth was smushed against the table top.

"Good God, Miss Granger. I must thank you for opening my eyes to see what a failure I really am. Truly, you have my eternal gratitude. How much do I owe you for those pearls of wisdom?"

She thought for a moment. "That one was on the house."

Snape lapsed into a sour, brooding silence, and she allowed herself a moment to marvel that she'd actually found him and his forearms attractive. Not _just_ attractive. Not even just gentle-swooping-in-her-stomach-attractive. It was more like cosh-you-with-a-sledgehammer-to-the-brain-stem-when-your-back-is-turned attractive, which was, in Hermione's opinion, _very_ attractive indeed. Hermione frowned at her drink and tried not to think about the coshing. Or the kiss. Which wasn't even good. No, definitely not. How could it be? Snape was a vile, digusting, floppy-dicked, cheese-balled—

Okay, so the kiss was good. It might have been more than good. It might have been bloody _fantastic_. And she just might have wanted another.

Apparently, according to her alcohol-drenched brain, the only logical way to get another was to insult the man even more.

With great effort, she raised her head.

"Look, Snape. You're a pathetic wanker and I'm twenty-five years old, single, and have too much old-school knitwear in my closet. We should..."

She lost her bravado halfway and tried to compensate by taking a deep swig from Snape's tankard, as her own was empty. She spluttered her way to composure and began again. "We should—that is to say... We should finish what we, erm, started. "

Snape gave her a sort of up-down appraising look that made her want to cross her arms in front of her chest. It reminded her of the look of vague apology that Ron gave her when she found out he was cheating on her; a look that made her feel like _she_ was being the unreasonable one for expecting other men to find her attractive; a look condescending in its sympathy. It was the sort of look you give a moldy plate of leftovers you find in the back of the fridge. Guilty, because you bought it and didn't eat it, but left it to rot instead. Disgusted as much by the wasted money as by the sour stink. The sort of look you give roadkill. She frowned.

_God_, what was she thinking? That he would actually want to shag her when his mental faculties weren't corrupted by the hallucinatory properties of Puffapod Blooms? Maybe Ron was right. Snape said it himself. She _was_ hard to want.

She just wanted to go home now.

"Look, if you don't want to shag me, that's fine," she said, fishing in her pockets for spare coins. She'd be damned if she were to beg for a pity shag, and she'd be damned if she were to accept a pity drink. She tossed the first thing her fingers touched onto the table and stood, holding on to the lip of the bar for dear life. She looked at him coldly, sticking her nose in the air. "If you think I'm _beneath_ your attention, I respect your opinion. But I want you to know that you're wrong and I hate you."

And then, it happened.

The man smiled.

Honest to God _smiled_. It was a confusing experience for her, but not altogether unpleasant. "So long as your sexuality isn't as dysfunctional as your ability to repot a Mandragora, I wouldn't say 'no'."

It took her eight seconds to process his words. "So... Yes to the sex?" she asked incredulously.

He raised his chin to give her a contemptuous look.

"If we _must_," he sneered. Somehow, his sneer seemed a lot more friendly.

"How... flattering..." she said slowly, trying not to gape at his face.

"It is hardly the time to be choosy, Miss Granger," he said, nodding wisely.

_Dammit_. Now she had to say something clever back. Her clever arsenal was running a little low at the moment.

"And...and..." She frowned. "I'll have you know, my sexuality is far from dysfunctional. I'm not some timid little virgin. In fact," she added brightly, suddenly feeling quite happy, "you should see my bollocks! They're gigantic."

If the look on Snape's face was any indication, he'd taken this statement literally.

She laughed.

More like snorted, actually.

"I cannot tolerate women who speak—and laugh—like three-hundred-fifty pound, liquor-guzzling, skirt-chasing sailors, but I suppose I must settle for you," he said, standing from his seat.

"Well, that's good, because I do not like men who...who..." She thought very hard for a moment. "I don't like men who stand like you."

"Stand like me?" he said, his voice too low and quiet for the racket in the bar, but she heard it anyway.

"Yes. You stand... weird. You stand like a... Like a dork."

"I find it rather endearingly pathetic, watching you try to fit your entire vocabulary in one sentence." He pulled out of his seat and moved around to stand in front of her.

"I happen to have an excellent vocabulary! My mental _lexicon_ happens to be meritorious, and estimable, and prodigious, and _Brobdingnagian_—it's a real bloody word, check it!—and perspicacious, and—"

And she couldn't finish her train of thought, or indeed speak at all, because Snape had grabbed her about the waist and was now kissing the crap out of her. He insinuated his tongue in the seam of her lips and when it touched hers, there was an honest-to-God celestial choir singing their blessed little arses off in her head.

"I—"

"Shush, Hermione," he whispered against her mouth and proceeded to drive her to near-madness with his wet, wicked muscle.

This was when she noticed that he was slowly walking them both toward the door.

She frowned at him and pulled her arm out of his grip. "And just where do you think you're taking me?" She felt entitled to be a little belligerent.

"Have you revised your opinion on our arrangement, Granger?"

'Arrangement? '_Jesus,_ he may just have been the least romantic man to ever walk the face of the Earth.

"We still need to pay," she pointed out, gesturing toward their empty glasses still piled on the bar. She had, apparently, thrown nothing more than a sad, dishevelled piece of pocket lint onto the table.

"Keep your voice down. I do not plan on paying for that vile swill. You, however, are free to."

Her jaw nearly dropped. Severus Snape was _broke_ in addition to everything else? She looked again at the pile of abandoned glassware. She certainly didn't have the gold for all of that. Maybe Harry wouldn't mind if she just put it on his tab. She'd pay him back of course, and—

Snape was tugging at her arm again. "Oi! Snape, we can't just leave without—"

But he already had her halfway out the door, and nobody seemed to notice that two war heroes were leaving without paying their tab. She should have been nervous. Horrified, even. But it was oddly... liberating. She had to resist the urge to giggle naughtily.

And that was the story of how Hermione Granger, Prissiest Prig to ever Priss the Prig, became a common criminal.

How the mighty have fallen, indeed.

* * *

They were back in Poppy Cock's. The room above Poppy Cock's, to be precise. Did we mention that Hermione lived in a rented room above Poppy Cock's Greenhouse?

Well, Hermione lived in a rented room above Poppy Cock's Greenhouse.

She shut the door quietly behind her and leaned her head against it in an attempt to collect herself. She muttered the incantations to the wards and turned to face Snape.

"So..." she began nervously, wringing her hands together. It felt odd standing with Snape in her very real room, with her very real couch taking up most of the space of the floor behind him, with her very real kitchen table neatly topped with a very real basket of fruit, and her very real cat, Doorknob, staring at them inquisitively from the window sill.

He seemed slightly amused by her disease. "So..." he repeated gravely, all mock seriousness as he too leaned against the wall. Then he ruined it by smirking his stupid (sexy) smirk.

"So... Where were w—"

He saved the moment with a very ardent, very dominant, very _real_ kiss.

"You... have to... stop... _Oh!_... cutting me... off... like... that..." she gasped breathlessly in between his kisses. He pushed his body resolutely against hers, one hand braced against the door behind her and the other digging almost chastely into her upper arm, and she never thought she would like being pressed up against the wall like this, but _oh, Merlin_, did she ever.

"Seems... to... work..." he groaned back at her, dipping his knees to grind his sharp hips into the softness of her own. He bit and sucked and licked his way down the curve of her neck, sliding her bra strap down her shoulder with his teeth. The contrast of his heated mouth to the cold air hitting her skin made her knees quiver. _Quiver_! Like in those trashy romance novels that she did not—absolutely _did not_—ever read.

"_Fuck_," he whispered almost reverently, watching as her skin flushed pink, then red from his onslaught. Her face heated and she wondered if she would ever get used to being looked at like _that_ by Severus Snape.

"You... You look..." he groaned raggedly. A small, wet sound came out of her throat and their eyes met, hers impossibly wide, his impossibly black. He was breathing heavily, his lips parted, his chest rising and falling rapidly beneath his robes. The moment seemed to last forever.

She lunged forward and wrapped her hands around the back of his neck and tugged him down to her level. She kissed him full on the mouth and trailed her lips along the faint stubble on his cheek to the knob where the sharp line of his jaw met beneath his ears. Trying to remember what it was he did to her ears earlier that almost drove her past the brink of madness, she pulled his earlobe into her mouth and sucked.

He purred.

And the sound of it vibrated against her breasts.

She brought her hands to the first button of his robe and tried desperately to unhook it from its hole. Impatient, she resorted to a muttered incantation. His buttons fell to the floor simultaneously with a metallic clatter.

"Impressive," he drawled, narrowing his eyes. "When did you learn wandless magic? No matter. You have a lot to learn, still."

She was just wondering about the best way to get him to _stop bloody talking_ when she felt a cold draught and looked down to find herself completely naked.

"Wha—when—"

This time he cut her off by swiping the broad part of his tongue against her nipple. He watched it pucker, and blew on it gently.

"So very pretty," he said quietly.

He slid both hands around the outer curves of her breasts and squeezed lightly. He hefted the weight of her right breast in his hand and passed his palm slowly along the underside of it. Using just the very tip of one calloused finger, he traced a faint circle around the outer edge of her areola, pressing his other palm into her belly to quell her spasms of pleasure. He took his hands away and did the same to her other breast.

Then he bent his dark head over her chest, his hair tickling her, and repeated his actions with his tongue, never touching the tips of her nipples. Frustrated and over-sensitized, she thrust her chest out at him in an effort to assuage the unbearable itch rising to a point inside of her and noticed that he was holding both her arms together above her head.

"Do stop squirming, Miss Granger," he chided. "Do you, perhaps, wish me to stop?"

"I just—I can't..." she breathed out, arching her back in a desperate attempt to ease the ache he had caused in her breasts.

"_Answer me_, girl," he growled, tugging (_finally, finally_) at her nipple with his teeth.

"Ah!" she yelped. "No! No! Don't stop! Don't you dare!"

"No," he replied firmly before bending and placing the whole of his mouth over her nipple. She felt the suction of his tongue pulling against her flesh and wriggled her arms out of his grip to clutch his head to her chest.

"Contra-contraception," she finally gasped out. Some very small part of Responsible Hermione's brain congratulated her on having the presence of mind to remember such things as family planning.

He practically growled against her neck, his crooked teeth grazing the skin there with a delicious insistence. "Taken care of," he insisted shortly, resuming the sexual onslaught of her breasts.

He rose and traced her bottom lip lightly with his thumb, dipped it to follow the line of her jaw, and allowed his touch to linger at a shivering and wonderful spot behind her ear that she hadn't known existed. She groaned appreciatively and dared to insinuate a hand between his legs to squeeze his cock.

"What's the matter," she teased. "Hand got your snake?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Your creativity astounds me, Miss Gra—"

Shee quite suddenly captured his lips in another kiss, this one even more intense and demanding, if that were possible. He made an angry sound and ground himself against her palm, pushing her shoulders back into the wall. When he nipped at her and she parted her lips just slightly and he, like the opportunistic bastard that he was, slipped his tongue fully in her mouth, the only word she could think of that came close was _plunder_. It brought a moan from somewhere deep inside her throat, heady and low and getting trapped in the scant space between their bodies.

The hands gripping at her hips seemed to know what they were doing and she wanted—needed—them to move lower and do what they had before. "Get on with it," she demanded insistently.

He drew his lips away from hers with a groan that shot directly to her womb and tightened her nipples. Snape then surprised her by settling on his knees before her.

"Oh!" was her somewhat alarmed response, because there was once an almost-feminist moment back when she was still a teenager involving a hand mirror, shortly followed by a sense of pity for any unfortunate soul who had to go _down there._

Snape then actually shushed her as though anticipating the beginning of an objection and finding it rather ridiculous. "Quiet, Granger," he murmured, and the sound of the four little syllables of the two little words skidded across her most intimate parts. And bam! _Ka-Pow!_ There was her heart exploding in her chest.

He then surprised her even more by parting her thighs, his hands on the inside of her knees, completely exposing her to his scrutiny. She choked and tensed as he lowered his face to the triangle between her thighs and she felt his hot breath against her equally heated flesh. She moved her hands down protectively.

"No," he said, batting her hands away. "_Trust_ me." And how could she not, with him on his knees at her feet, his eyes burning indecently into hers?

She watched him as he ran his palms up the insides of her thighs and pushed them apart. He looked back into her eyes as he slid a hand deftly under her knee and lifted until her calf rested on his shoulder and her legs were spread even further. There was the whisper of hair sliding along a thigh

"Trust me," he repeated himself. "You'll like this."

A few well-placed kisses on the sensitive skin of her inner thigh and a swooping sensation in her stomach had her suspecting any objection may have, in fact, been a little ridiculous.

And then, suddenly, his mouth was _there._ She felt the broad flat of his tongue slide like a masterful brush stroke across the whole of her, from perineum to clitoris, in a way that made her buck her hips and fist her hands in those curtains of hair and decide that yes, any objection to _this_ probably was completely ridiculous.

Because it was so unbelievably good. Wet and warm and throbbing and threatening to rob her of her sense. So good she found herself using that calf at his shoulder to urge him forward with these positively wanton and undulating movements, her heel digging into his back, a series of breathy noises issuing from her throat.

His tongue lingered at that little apex of nerves that she knew so well and he _flicked._ She gasped when he did it, and again when he did it again, because there was something about the delicacy of the move that made it all the more intense; made her feel like she was teetering on the edge of some disastrous cliff, half-terrified and half-elated at the prospect of a fall.

The lips, skillful and greedy and _aggressive_, clamped down harder and—oh dear God—he _sucked_ like you'd greedily go after a popsicle, and he did this at the same time she felt two fingers at her entrance, pressing in with a mind-blowing fullness. The pressure of them, pumping in and out and in again, was simply intolerable, cresting like a wave, and she was holding onto the edge by one hand.

She bit her lip and emitted a strangled sound, tossing her head from side to side and pressing her fingers against her mouth.

He surfaced for a moment. "_No_, Granger," he said sternly. "I want to hear you let go. Just. Let. Go."

And God, that made this guttural sob come out, because she wanted desperately to let go, but she wasn't sure she could or even should, and—

And it became impossible to think because the tongue was there again, and the lips, and the fingers pressing in, not moving, but simply buried pulsating knuckle-deep within her, and just _everything._ She must have been moaning and keening something completely and utterly shameless and obscene; the ache was unbearable and white-hot and prickling along her scalp and skittering down her spine and he was sucking and fucking and his fingers fluttered inside her, curving upward and making that same curt, decisive "come hither" motion and—

And her climax came on her suddenly, like something paradoxically primitive and sophisticated and—good Lord—just oh. So. Good. She gripped his hair even harder, trying to hold on as she lost balance and began to fall, and she didn't mean to beg him _pleaseplease_ to stop her, but she was doing it anyway. He wouldn't; he didn't stop her, he only pushed her completely over the edge with that tongue and those fingers and their dexterous movements, and it was strange that she should keep falling—in waves, it seemed—because she was breaking to pieces even though she hadn't hit the ground. Shattering into something glimmering and refracting and completely robbed of anything even resembling thought.

From somewhere, she heard dimly: "That's it. Come for me, Hermione. Good girl," whispered broken and crude into her skin.

He kissed her halfway back to rationality and it was something wet and salty and utterly erotic rather than disgusting.

He gently eased her leg off his shoulder, pushed her back into the wall, and supported her boneless body with his knee propped between her legs. He swiftly tugged his trousers and pants down to his knees and lifted her by the waist, his breathing laboured; his face flushed and sweaty.

As she wrapped her legs about him she had a brief impression of blunt fullness pressing against her entrance before he thrust forward, every ridge of his cock stuttering against her climax-ravaged nerve-endings, every pump pressing his crisp-haired pubic bone against her swollen clit. The carnal slapping sound of flesh joining flesh filled her threadbare flat.

Every point of contact was inflated to confounding proportions: his hands supporting her bum, the skin of his thighs dragging against her inner thighs, his clothed chest warm and scratchy against her naked chest. She surged her hips forward in time to his, and he met her eyes and increased his pace.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes..." he panted over and over in a breathless litany.

"Fuck," she hissed out. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" The skin of her back rubbed raw against the not-so-smooth wall, but at this point she wouldn't give half a damn if Boss Man himself materialised on top of her couch.

And there it was; that self-satisfied look again, strangely laboured under his utterly enraptured face. He was looking down at the place of their coupling, apparently lost on the darkling plain of his own impending orgasm. And, amazingly, she felt another climax of her own building in the short silences between the sound of his body meeting hers over, and over, and over again.

"I want you to touch yourself, Granger," he said softly.

"What...I..."

"Place your fingers on your cunt like I did. Make yourself _come_."

And she was powerless to disobey. Tentatively, she withdrew one hand from around his shoulder and touched the tip of her finger to her clitoris, his eyes riveted to its journey there.

"Press... harder..." he groaned, and she complied. She whined through her teeth as he sucked in a breath of air and cursed savagely.

"Fucking _hell_, Hermione. You taste... You feel... So fucking sweet..."

"Oh God, oh God, oh God!" It was a vulgar prayer punctuated through with the occasional "Jesus!" and "Please!" and "Don't stop! For the love of God, don't stop!"

He didn't stop, not even when she wrapped her arms around his back and twisted her fingers into his hair; not even as her legs wrapped more tightly around his hips; not even when she sunk her teeth into the place where his neck met his shoulder. Because, merciful Zeus, it was too much. She was clutching to the edge for dear life again, and again he impelled her over it. He grunted, his climax raw and breathy; catching in his throat; ripped out from between his teeth; hitting the air between them and spanning across her cheeks and—

And everything was absorbed into a single point inside her head, right between her eyes, and it exploded outward underneath her skin as her eardrums popped and her mouth fell slack and her brain dissolved into mush and her lungs were far, far, far too small for all the air she needed; her body too fragile for the coiling clutching convulsions that seized her by the very bones, and it was half-pain, half-pleasure as she hardly realised she was pressing her thumb and rubbing herself into a delirium; and she belonged to the waves now, never to return, and—

And they somehow managed not to break anything too important as knees gave way and bones turned to jelly and the floor made intimate contact with their tangled bodies.

A great many gasping breaths and just a few apologies for dropping you, Miss Granger, Snape tucked a sweaty lock behind her ear. "Bedroom?" he purred.

It was all she could do to nod, because she was distracted by this funny thought. She thought how silly those people were who said they saw stars. She hadn't seen the stars; she'd _been_ the stars.

She shared this opinion with Snape, but all he said was "You're welcome," and asked her if she wouldn't like to reciprocate.

* * *

Later, when they were both spent and lying tangled on the couch, there came a repeated thudding sound issuing from the floorboards. Snape jerked awake and reached for his wand.

"Oh, don't worry about that," Hermione said groggily. "S'just Potato Man. He's harmless."

Snape looked skeptical, but he relaxed and placed his wand back on the coffee table.

From below: "Cease your fornicating ways this instant, Scrivener! You dare have the audacity to return here to my place of business? You can't live here anymore! Out! Out!"

Potato Man's feeble remonstrances were soon lost as they slipped off into the mute bliss of post-coital sleep, his elbow digging uncomfortably into her ribs, her hair smeared all over his face.

It wasn't too unpleasant.

For one thing, there wasn't any confetti.

* * *

"Fawkes," Snape said suddenly. It was a whisper; a confession. It was also a complete _non sequitur._

"Hmm?" she asked, reluctantly ending her exploration of his sparsely-haired and oh so very sexy chest in order to look up at him. She was thoroughly satisfied and utterly shagged, which must have accounted for her confusion on seeing a strangely stoic expression on Snape's face. "What was that?"

"Fawkes," he repeated. "That's why I'm not dead, as you so eloquently put it. Fawkes, as meddling as his late master, found me after your lot left and he proceeded to completely ruin my noble death."

"By saving your life, you mean?"

Snape nodded.

"I suppose this is the point where I tell you that you have the rest of your life ahead of you?" she offered playfully.

Snape scowled down his considerable nose at her. "I'm sure you can manage something much more trite, Miss Granger. 'All's well that ends well,' perhaps? Shall we ride off into the sunset? Get married and have a brood of bushy-haired, hook-nosed babies?"

"Oh, absolutely," she replied, smiling deviously up at him. "_Et cetera,_" she added airily, waving her hand in the air in an abstract representation of all the joy that was to come.

He gave her a look that might have been filthy if he didn't seem to still be bathed in post-coital bliss. "Excuse me?"

"It means 'and more'."

"Yes, I do have an elementary grasp of Latin. I know what _et cetera_ means."

"Well, I once read this book—"

"Imagine, Hermione Granger deferring to the wisdom of books," he drawled sarcastically.

Hermione made a face and continued only when she reckoned she'd properly expressed her irritation. "Don't interrupt. Anyway, I once read this book where the author argued—"

"The author inserted himself into the middle of the story? This sounds like a terrible book."

"Jesus, Snape, shut up. I'm trying to make a point here."

He gave a put-upon sigh, toying with her nipple. "Continue."

"_Anyway,_ the author argued that all stories should end with 'etc.' Because that's how it is in real life. More happens."

"What a shockingly original insight. Do remind me, when we're burning away our golden years in the sunset, to thank you for sharing that with me."

"You are the single most insufferable man I've ever met, and I don't like you at all."

"And you are the most obnoxious witch I've ever had the misfortune to encounter." He raised an eyebrow.

Hermione raised an eyebrow right back at him and snaked a hand down between his thighs. "Up for seconds, old man?"

"I imagine so, wench."

And now, Good night.

It is time to sleep.

So we will sleep with our pet Zeep.

Today is gone, today was fun,

Tomorrow is another one.

Everyday, from here to there,

Funny things are everywhere.

**Et cetera.**

* * *

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."  
-Kurt Vonnegut

The point of this quote is that Vonnegut told us that it's okay to not be so correct sometimes, so any errors you might have encountered while reading this story are entirely Kurt Vonnegut's fault.

On a more serious note, Ccognett and I had a blast writing this together, and we hope you had as much fun reading! We would love to hear what you think!


End file.
